244 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
ON AN" ANCIENT BUEIAL URN FROM THE 
CHEESEWRING DISTRICT. 
BY R. N. WORTH, F.G.S. 
(Read 1st May, 1888.) 
Among the additions to the Museum of the Plymouth Institution 
during the present year are the fragments of an ancient burial urn 
from a barrow in the Cheesewring district. The age and ornamen- 
tation give it exceptional interest, for it is hand-moulded and 
sun-dried ; of very high antiquity ; and the decoration is more 
elaborate, with one exception only, than that of any other British 
burial urn discovered in the county. 
It was found by some men who were engaged in removing a 
barrow — which appears really to have been a cairn — consisting 
mainly of stones, but was so fragile that it broke to pieces in the 
process of removal. It was described as having been oval, about 
two feet in length by eighteen inches in depth ; but an examination 
of the fragments shows that while it may have been deformed by 
pressure in the cairn, the original shape was undoubtedly intended 
to be round, and that little reliance can be placed upon the guesses 
made as to its dimensions. 
It contained ashes and calcined human bones ; and had in the 
centre a smaller vessel, described as resembling a small plate with 
a hole in the centre and a raised rim, supported on four little 
legs or pillars. Probably this vessel, no portion of which was 
preserved, was simply a small broken urn, or what is sometimes 
called a food vessel, such as is not unfrequently found in kists, 
and occasionally in the larger urns. 
The material of both the larger and the smaller vessel was the 
ordinary coarse granitic clay of the locality — sun-dried, but 
hardened and blackened by the ashes of the funeral fire. 
Taking the curves of the larger fragments, which fortunately 
represent the upper part of the urn, we find that they give a radius 
